Polly and Her Pals — 1925-07-01

Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912, and by the mid-1920s it had become one of the most visually adventurous strips in American newspapers. This four-panel daily follows a domestic squabble: Polly's father, the rotund Paw, sits reading while Ma demands he confront a 'lazy loafer' in the house; a suave stranger then intercepts Ma with elaborate gallantry, deflecting her wrath with florid compliments while Paw escapes censure entirely. Sterrett's thick brushwork, exaggerated silhouettes, and precise speech-balloon choreography show how newspaper dailies — printed millions of copies at a time — were doing the real work of codifying comics' visual grammar, years before the comic book format existed as a distinct object.